


Swing High

by pvwork



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, M/M, Other, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pvwork/pseuds/pvwork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako's got a voice like a songbird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swing High

_Mako Mori? Yeah, I've heard of her. Her band is pretty great. Danger, Strike it  is cool. Me and my girlfriend, we would, you know, do the do to that song. It's pretty good. Great bass line. _

Sitting on Jake's shoulders gives you a pretty good vantage point. You crane your neck to try and catch a better glimpse of the blue haired girl standing center stage a few hundred people forwards. 

She's a beauty alright, got black hair tipped in electric blue shining under the glare of the lights. Black tank. Black pants. Combat boots. 

Mako Mori stands as regal as a queen upon the stage. 

Her guitarist is to her left, plucking at the strings, antsy looking and just rarin' to go. He's already bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet in anticipation. You like that. Like how happy it makes you feel to be here with people who so obviously love what they're doing. You imagine you can see the gleam of his teeth even this far away. 

The drummer is in the very back, half obscured by his drum kit, broad shoulders and strong hands all ready to fuck shit up and smash some beats into your ears, mess with the rhythm of your heart. 

"Thank you all for coming tonight. It is our pleasure to perform for you. I hope you enjoy the show." 

Then the lights dim and suddenly flare up again, this time brighter than ever. The crowd screams. You scream too caught up in the primal hivemind that resonates at especially great concerts. 

When she sings, it's like you can see the ocean-blue coming up towards you, crushing waves of sand and sea coming together and booming out of the speakers with every beat. 

Her voice _soars_ , higher and higher and your heart beats fast as you sway to the beat because every song feels like a battle won, a warrior bloodied and scared, a survivor coming out from the deep, dark depths victorious. You don't know how she manages it, her voice dipping low, like she's whispering a secret to you, before she's flying high once again, bringing up images of a land that stretches beyond the line of sight, beyond the limit of imagination. 

She takes your breath away. 

_That girl's got a voice like a songbird._

It's unbearably hot under the unforgiving stage lights. Raleigh can feel sweat pooling under his armpits and frowns at his guitar strings, as if by sheer force of will he could keep them from becoming sweat-slick. His thoughts wander back to earlier this evening in an attempt to comfort himself.

"What if they don't like the new song?" Raleigh asks. What if they don't like me? 

He's not nervous, but maybe he's a little wary of how the crowd might react. He's never performed at such a big venue alone before.

"They'll fucking love it," Chuck says, as he angrily shakes his phone after another attempt at Flappy Bird. "You say the most comforting things."

"Performing your newly written song at the beginning of our concert is the right thing to do. It's very symbolic." And Mako smiles, just a quirk of her lips, but her eyes are so deep, so full of pride and confidence in him that it almost convinces Raleigh that he'll be fine, she's got his back. Then Chuck walks all of four steps over from the couch of their tour bus to the little dining table and slings a heavy arm around Raleigh's neck as Mako takes up one of his guitar-calloused hands into both of hers.

"What is there not to love?"

Four hours later and Raleigh's standing at the center of an impossibly wide stage all alone save for a bottle of water hiding behind an amp. He turns his head a little and catches sight of a flash of blue, Mako's hair, a streak of sandy brown, Chuck's shirt. Raleigh takes a deep breath to brace himself, and thinks: This song is for one person only, and that's me.

"I need some help with this song. So I'm going to request that Mako Mori back me up on this one, please and thank you. If we were ever to operate any heavy machinery together, I would hope she was my co-pilot.". 

The crowd chuckles and Chuck pushes Mako onto stage after abruptly shoving a mike into her hand. 

"Wow," Mako says into the mike, just to test it out, and smiles a mega-watt smile for the crowd, "this was unexpected." 

"I couldn't do this without you." I need you more than I could say. 

_'I saw you in the deep and you swam towards me.'._

It's not anyone's fault that the tabloids pick up on how handsy Raleigh and Chuck can get. 

It's a complicated game of chicken with next to no guidelines. A hand on the back of a neck, a clap on shoulder, some shoulder bumps while exiting an airport, just to see who pulls away first, gets uncomfortable with the contact. It would all be very boring if not for the fact that they stare at each other so intensely, the unspoken challenge and very potent glances between them morphing into a palpable tension in the air around them. They are both very competitive, and it doesn't help Chuck that flushes red first every single time. It makes him more competitive. 

"Boys, boys, all this eyefucking is splattering our images across the fifth page of too many silly news rags." 

"But Mako--" 

"This isn't really great publicity for us. We need to make front page." 

Which is how the unspeakable incident of '27 at SFO occurs. Don't ask about it, please.

_What Mako and Raleigh have is true love. Have you seen the way they look at each other? It's like every love song she sings is dedicated to him. It's magical!_

Mako's working through college with as a double-E major and Raleigh works at a cafe and sometimes they sit outside after his Thursday shift ends, right before her late night physics discussion, and they sing. He brings his guitar, Lady, out of the backroom and she lends her sweet voice to accompany Mako's while they keep time by stomping their feet, tapping their hands against tables, thighs, walls. 

It's December when she takes him home, up to her apartment, up five flights of stairs, and smiles into the crook of his neck when she closes the door behind him and loops her arms around his neck. 

"What are we doing?" Raleigh breathes in the morning, breath like gray smoke pouring from his warm mouth. 

"Nothing dangerous, I think. This is very nice," Mako says, "I like it. Let's keep doing what we're doing now." 

"It's like you read my mind." 

_I for one am all for the theory that Chuck and Mako are secretly together. I mean, they've been childhood friend since forever, and what are they? Nineteen? Twenty? That's like twelve years of friendship right there._

His dad is the army. Her dad is in the army. 

They lived on an army base in Sydney together once, one impossible year of Australia. They would chase each other across the tarmac until they got yelled at good naturedly by someone, or they heard the rumble of approaching engines. 

They poured over the schematics of fighter jets and helicopter rotor blades and struggled over _The Bhagavad-Gita_ together. What is war? 

They snuck into a youth choir once. 

She taught him some Japanese. He taught her how to spit pretty darn far. 

_We share a very special bond, and we are very supportive of each other's artistic endeavor._

It's hot in SoCal. 

Chuck is complaining loudly. Girls and quite a few boys turn their heads and look over their shades, because mouthy, muscle bound foreign boys are their kind of toys, but Mako and Raleigh have him firmly sandwiched between the two of them as they sit out on one big towel under a beach umbrella, big sunglasses firmly affixed to their faces. 

"Chas," Mako says, "if you don't put on any sunblock, you are going to burn like the ginger you are." 

"We're in the shade, I'll survive." 

"No, you're going to burn, crackle like roast meat," Raleigh says. "You're skin will be lovely and crisp," 

"That's fucking disgusting," Chuck says, but he lets Mako slather a healthy layer of sunblock onto his back and only grumbles a little when Raleigh puts a dab on the tip of his nose. 

"What about you, huh?" 

"I golden." 

"That's not a fucking verb, ya dill." 

"Boys." Mako says, and then two pairs of hands are reaching out to help her rub in sunblock, all let me's and so do you need me to's.

**Author's Note:**

> I played Bastille's "Pompei" like a thousand times while writing this.
> 
> ETA: 14.24.03


End file.
